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Female hang glider tried to cling to pilot’s feet, fell 300 metres

B.C. woman dies after slipping from harness on Saturday

Lenami Godinez has been identified as the female hang-glider who suffered a fatal fall near Agassiz, Saturday.

Photograph by: Screengrab
, LinkedIn.com

VANCOUVER — A female hang-glider, who detached from a tandem flight shortly after launch near Agassiz, B.C., on Saturday, tried desperately to cling to the pilot’s feet before falling 300 metres to her death.

Jason Warner, safety officer for the Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada, said the pilot knew almost immediately something was wrong after the pair launched off the popular Mount Woodside just before noon. He tried to grab the 27-year-old woman, identified as Lenami Godinez, and sought to hold on to the straps of her harness but she slid out of his grasp, grabbing his feet in a last-ditch attempt to hang on.

Godinez’s body was found by searchers about seven hours later, about 20 metres from one of the pilot’s shoes.

“(The pilot) realized right away from takeoff that something was wrong and he tried to grab her,” Warner said. “The shoe ended up being a clue to finding her.”

Upper Fraser Valley RCMP Sgt. Mark Pelz said police had received a call shortly before noon Saturday that a woman riding tandem on a glider had fallen. Police, aided by helicopter, search and rescue teams from nearby Chilliwack and Kent-Harrison, as well as local paragliders combed the terrain for hours. One of the paragliders spotted a shoe earlier in the day but didn’t link it to the pilot until just before the search was to be called off.

Warner said they retraced their steps and found Godinez, who is originally from Mexico but has lived in Canada for nine years. She had worked for the administrative services south coast region division at B.C. Ministry of Environment.

A base for the search was set up at the Koffee Kettle Motel. Owner Dahlia Simper said the woman’s boyfriend watched in horror as just a few minutes into the flight she fell out of her harness and grabbed the pilot until she could no longer hold on to him and fell.

“It’s really sad,” she said.

Simper, who has owned the motel for 10 years, said there have been several hang gliding accidents in the area in recent years.

Warner said he can’t recall a fatal accident like this happening in Canada.

“We work very hard to make sure our safety standards are adhered to,” Warner said.

He said the pilot had more than a decade of experience hang gliding all over the world and was up to date on his membership with the association, which monitors instructors. But he noted this has been “an irregular year” with two paragliding accidents in which the pilots injured their backs after failing to properly prepare for takeoff. Earlier this month, a paraglider crash-landed into a tree near Agassiz after jumping off Mount Woodside.

Warner said HPAC is considering new safety measures following Saturday’s tragedy. “We’re now strongly encouraging the buddy system where somebody looks at your equipment before you launch,” he said.

Warner said the pilot is emotional and upset. He has apologized to the woman’s boyfriend and both are receiving support from victim’s services. It was the woman and her boyfriend’s first time trying the sport, said Warner.

“At this point there is an investigation so we don’t know if it was a pilot error or an equipment failure,” he said.

The BC Coroner’s Service is investigating.

Barb McLintock, spokeswoman for the BC Coroner’s Service, said an investigation will determine whether there need to be more fail-safe measures in the sport.

“There’s nothing to suggest this is anything but a very tragic accidental death,” she said. “We need to know what happened; what went wrong.”

Pelz said the police aren’t investigating criminal charges but that could be a possibility as well as potential civil implications because the pilot was contracted to provide the service.

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